Review Summary

Not long before the children’s movie “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” sets sail, you might find yourself hoping for a nor’easter to come and blow this latest and perhaps last installment in the screen version of C.S. Lewis’s series, far, far away. But where would it go? Both Never Land and Wonderland are occupied, courtesy of the Walt Disney Company, which helped produce the first “Narnia” movies, the fairly diverting “Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and the disappointing “Prince Caspian.” Now 20th Century Fox has taken up the franchise with largely dreary results. The series has a new director, the generally reliable Michael Apted, who established his rapport with wee ones years ago with “7 Up!,” the first in a documentary series that has revisited the same group of British men and women in new movies every seven years since 1964, when the participants were squirmy 7-year-olds. Though Mr. Apted brings a few minor idiosyncrasies to “Dawn Treader” — notably with his riskily off-putting direction of the young actor Will Poulter, a “Narnia” newcomer — a strong filmmaking voice was clearly not called for in an entertainment that has been carefully calibrated for maximum blandness. Mr. Apted is aboard to keep the franchise sailing along or at least afloat, which he does. — Manohla Dargis